Setting Store as Down for Maintenance

What We'll Cover

This article covers the down for maintenance setting used by stores that have already launched. For stores that have not yet launched, see Previewing a Store Before Launch.

The Store Status setting allows you to place your store in maintenance mode and display a custom message to your store's visitors. Anyone signed into their store user account will be able to access the store's front end.

Just so you know! API connections to third parties will not work while your store is in maintenance mode.

Enabling Maintenance Mode

1. Go to Store Setup › Store Settings, then toggle the Store Status setting to Down for Maintenance.

2. Enter a custom message to be displayed to your customers or leave the default message. Although there is no character limit on this field, the page on your storefront which displays it was not designed to handle more than ~2,000 characters.

Speak code? The Message field also accepts HTML, allowing you or your designer more freedom when structuring your custom message.

3.Save your changes.

Viewing Your Site

While in maintenance mode any user logged in with admin permissions is able to view your storefront.

1. Click your Store Name in the bottom left of the control panel.

2. Click the Click here to see your store link.

Your store's homepage will load with a notification box in the upper left side of the screen indicating that your store is currently down for maintenance. Click and drag this box to move it.

To see your store’s maintenance message again — for example, if you are customizing the messaging — click the Click here to see what your visitors will see link.

SEO Impact

If a search engine attempts to crawl your site while it is in maintenance mode, they will see the maintenance mode page and receive a 503 server response. This response indicates to search engines that your site is down for maintenance and to “come back later”, which should prevent them from de-listing your site in their indices.